By CAROLE BRESLIN Now that the school year has begun, students — especially Catholic students — will find recourse to their favorite patron saint of studying. Some may choose St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine of Hippo. For those students who find it difficult to retain what they read and write about it, perhaps this saint will encourage them: St. Joseph of Cupertino. He was frequently called the village idiot. However, by God’s Providence, he became not only a priest but one of the most amazing levitating saints in the history of the Church. Joseph was born in Cupertino, a village about ten miles southeast of Rome, on June 17, 1603. His father had contracted so many debts that he…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN After returning from a visit to Mother Teresa of Calcutta and giving a retreat to her Missionaries of Charity there, Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, told a class of lay faithful, “Americans are living in a dream world.” He spoke of the thousands of people dying on the streets of Calcutta where Mother had begun her work with the poorest of the poor. In Skopje, Macedonia, Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu was born on August 26, 1910 to parents of Albanian heritage. From the time she received her First Holy Communion at the age of five and a half, she yearned to do God’s will. She received Confirmation a year later, suffering the tragedy of her father’s death only…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN I have a confession to make. It was not until I was nearly 40 years old that I learned about the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. While I understood the seasons of Advent, Lent, and Easter, I never paid much attention to the feasts and the time of the year they were celebrated. For example, it is no coincidence that the Feast of the Nativity of Mary (September 8) is celebrated exactly nine months after the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (December 8). Likewise, it is no coincidence that Christmas (December 25) is celebrated exactly nine months after the celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25). Mary plays a very significant role in…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN Thousands of years before the time of Christ, the Pharaoh of Egypt held the children of Israel in bondage. Our Lord proved His love for them when Moses led them out of Egypt. When Mary was carrying Jesus, she and Joseph, because of an imperial decree, had to travel to Bethlehem in order to be counted in the census. The Feast of the Holy Innocents commemorates the martyrdom of the boys under two years of age who were martyred by Herod for fear of the King of the Jews who might take his place. Even Jesus was condemned by the secular government, which was all part of God’s plan. A few years before Jesus died, John the…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN This month the Catholic Church celebrates the 100th anniversary of the death of Pope St. Pius X who had so many things in common with the last few Popes. Like Pope Francis, he had a special affinity for the poor — especially since he came from a poor family. Like Pope John Paul II, who updated the Code of Canon Law, Pope Pius X initiated the organization of all of canon law into one Code for the universal Church. Like Pope Benedict XVI, he fought the errors of modernism, stressing the importance of faith and reason. On June 3, 1835, Giovanni Battista Sarto and his wife, Margherita, took their day-old son, Giuseppe Melchiorre, to the church in…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN During the Final Discourse, our Lord speaks to His disciples at the Last Supper about union with Christ, union with the Father, and the coming of the Holy Spirit with the theme of love woven throughout the night’s sharing. “Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Martyrdom is an act of the will which one can suffer by giving one’s life, or by willing to do so even if not actually giving one’s life. When Pope St. John Paul II canonized St. Maximilian Kolbe on October 10, 1982, he told those present that the saint had lived these words in an absolutely literal manner. He freely…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN The sanctity of parents greatly influences the sanctity of their children, and hence we commonly find that not only are some brothers and sisters of saints also canonized, but their parents have been canonized, too. For example, St. Bridget of Sweden’s daughter is a saint of the Church. St. Dominic’s mother and siblings, as well as his uncles, were all models of holiness. In 1170, little more than 100 miles north of Madrid, in the small town of Calaruega, Castile, Blessed Joan of Aza gave birth to her son, Dominic, about whom she had a vision. She saw an all-powerful beast running with a torch in its mouth, interpreted as her son bringing light to a darkened…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN Part 2 After establishing the house at Villa degli Schiavi, Alphonsus stayed there, conducting many of his missions from this site. For the previous five years he had become widely known for his missions and sermons, bringing many Catholics back to the Catholic faith. While Alphonsus is well known as a moral theologian and for his writings, he spent 26 years giving missions in the kingdom of Naples. From 1726 until 1752, he preached in Naples. With patience people waited to receive absolution, which would allow them to receive Holy Communion. He had an uncommon ability to resolve disputes, bring people back to the Church, and end family feuds — not an easy thing to do in…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN Part 1 Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, having read the works of St. Alphonsus Liguori, took him as a mentor. It is not surprising, then, that Fr. Hardon taught his students, “If you are not encountering the cross, you are not doing God’s work.” Such were the lives of saints such as St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and especially of St. Alphonsus Liguori. To begin with, Alphonsus was baptized with ten names — quite a burden to bear. In 1696, Joseph de’ Liguori, a captain of the royal galleys, and his wife, Anna Cavalieri, welcomed their firstborn, a son, and named him Alphonsus Mary Anthony John Francis Cosmas Damian Michael Caspar de’ Liguori.…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN Every month the Apostleship of Prayer publishes the intentions of the Holy Father: one for a universal intention and one for an evangelical intention. In June 2014, the evangelical intention was that Europe may rediscover its Christian roots through the witness of believers. The advent of Christian civilization coincided with the advent of Western civilization. The Benedictine monasteries established throughout Europe brought about the development of farming, education, and peace. These Benedictine monasteries were started by St. Benedict. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, the author, Thomas E. Woods, explains how St. Benedict came to be called the Father of Europe. The monasteries he founded were the centers of the “literary inheritance of the ancient…Continue Reading